Burning Ridge

July 9, 2018
When veterinarian Cole Walker and his two young daughters go for a trail ride in Mizushima’s agreeable fourth Timber Creek K-9 mystery (after 2017’s Hunting Hour), they make a gruesome discovery: a man’s charred boot with a decomposing foot still in it. Deputy Mattie Cobb of the Timber Creek, Colo., sheriff’s office and her canine partner, Robo, go looking for the rest of the body. Once they find it, the victim turns out to have a personal link to Mattie’s own troubled past. She and her brother were separated as small children after their father went to prison for assaulting their mother, who later abandoned them. Mattie’s interactions with her colleagues and friends, particularly with Cole, to whom she’s romantically attracted, ring true. Robo, meanwhile, comes across as a real dog without any of the anthropomorphic characteristics that many genre authors impose upon animals. Readers will be fascinated to learn how search dogs are trained and to see one in action. Mizushima delivers a sufficiently complicated plot, well-developed interpersonal relationships, awe-inspiring landscape descriptions, and some excruciatingly vivid action. Agent: Terrie Wolf, AKA Literary Management.